Friday, December 27, 2013

Caste is one of India’s most enduring institutions and still retains its hold on Indian society. For those not fortunate to be born in the higher echelons of the caste hierarchy, life can be difficult indeed. Despite government efforts, caste discrimination is still rife, and low-caste Indians have to bear the brunt of poverty, illiteracy and violence. Lenin Raghuvanshi is in the forefront of the fight against caste discrimination, to ensure a just and equal society.

Raghuvanshi is the founder of the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), which fights for the rights of marginalized people in several North Indian states, especially in the area around Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

Raghuvanshi was born in an upper caste family, which he describes as “feudal”. He got a bachelor’s degree in ayurveda, modern medicine and surgery from the State Ayurvedic College in Haridwar. But the social inequities that faced India made him take up the cause of bonded labourers. This is when he noticed that not a single bonded labourer came from the upper caste, and realised that the problem was essentially caste.

In 1996, Raghuvanshi founded PVCHR to fight the caste system. He works to ensure basic rights to vulnerable groups like children, women, Dalits, tribes and minorities. Raghuvanshi and his team works at the grassroots level in Varanasi and around 200 villages in Uttar Pradesh and five other states. PVCHR works to eliminate situations that give rise to the exploitation of vulnerable and marginalized groups, and to start a movement for a people-friendly movement (Jan Mitra Samaj) through an inter-institutional approach.

Raghuvanshi has his task cut out for him since the lot of Dalits and other oppressed minorities continues to be dismal. “In the past, if anyone from the lower caste breached the unwritten law of caste hierarchy, the person would be beaten up in public. Now the person will be shot dead and the village burnt down and the women raped. A bridegroom riding a horse during his wedding, an enterprising peasant digging a well on his land, if a boy falls in love with a girl – do you kill them? Yet, if they belong to the Dalit caste they are killed. We still say that there is rule of law in India,” he said in his acceptance speech while receiving the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights.

He is also concerned about the plight of women and children in this country. “India is still very much a patriarchal and caste-based society with gender discrimination. The destructive effects of gender discrimination, patriarchal oppression and the semi-feudal society so prevalent in 21st century India are manifest in our 55 million children, employed at times in subhuman conditions,” he says in a newspaper interview.

Raghuvanshi received the Gwangju Human Rights Award in 2007. He was made an Ashoka Fellow in 2001 and was presented the International Human Rights Prize of the City of Weimar (Germany) in 2010. Raghuvanshi once said to a newspaper that caste discrimination is so rife in Bundelkhand that a Dalit has to take off his chappal and hold it in his hand if a person belonging to the Thakur caste approaches. It’s not something that would make us proud.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Please support for the medical treatment of Pramod
Kumar Yadav 17 years old student of class 12 in Krishak Inter college,
Harhuwa,Varanasi,UP in India. On 6th August, 2013 he was picked up by the four
policemen from outside school premise. For three days he faced severe police
torture in the custody for the confession of crime. Please watch his pathetic story
of crime against humanity on the follows YouTube:

33 kids rescued from factories

New Delhi, August 6. 2013. DHNS:

Children worked in deplorable conditions

Rohan, an eight-year-old, was at a
loss of words when enquired about his family in his native village in
Bihar. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he kept repeating his desire to
go to his real home. The feeling of loneliness and insecurity was
dominant as he tried to reveal what he went through.

Almost every child had a
painful story to tell, when 33 boys in the age bracket of seven to 14
years were rescued from shoe and garment manufacturing units in Wazirpur
village in north-west Delhi on Tuesday.

These children were rescued in a raid
by Delhi Task Force, police, labour department and members of a
non-profit organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan.

These children belong to various districts of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar.Sub-divisional magistrate Mani Bhushan Malhotra ordered registration of cases against defaulting employers.

Rohan was made to toil hard for more than 12 hours a day. In a small
10x4 ft room, he worked in a condition of virtual slavery with other
child labourers.

He has not seen his family since he was trafficked to the Capital nine
months ago. The middleman — he refers to whom as chacha — who belongs to
his neighbouring village, paid an advance money to his parents and
promised them a better life for him.

Parents deceived

The
trafficker deceived his parents into believing that Rohan can earn
money in Delhi and can study simultaneously. But in reality the promised
dream turned out to be a nightmare of modern-day slavery, where his
movements were also restricted by his employers.

Thus compelling him to eat, sleep and work in the same room without being paid any wage for the work.

Kailash
Satyarthi, founder of BBA said, “Many major international brands are
flourishing at the cost of freedom and education of Indian children and
thus destroying their childhood,” he said.

“These brands can not hide behind the
excuse of complexity of supply chain management. They are the principal
employers and have to have to be booked under appropriate laws. It
should be investigated that, for whom these children are really
working.”

Therefore it is a kind request please take appropriate action at earliest.

33 kids rescued from factories

New Delhi, August 6. 2013. DHNS:

Children worked in deplorable conditions

Rohan, an eight-year-old, was at a
loss of words when enquired about his family in his native village in
Bihar. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he kept repeating his desire to
go to his real home. The feeling of loneliness and insecurity was
dominant as he tried to reveal what he went through.

Almost every child had a
painful story to tell, when 33 boys in the age bracket of seven to 14
years were rescued from shoe and garment manufacturing units in Wazirpur
village in north-west Delhi on Tuesday.

These children were rescued in a raid
by Delhi Task Force, police, labour department and members of a
non-profit organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan.

These children belong to various districts of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar.Sub-divisional magistrate Mani Bhushan Malhotra ordered registration of cases against defaulting employers.

Rohan was made to toil hard for more than 12 hours a day. In a small
10x4 ft room, he worked in a condition of virtual slavery with other
child labourers.

He has not seen his family since he was trafficked to the Capital nine
months ago. The middleman — he refers to whom as chacha — who belongs to
his neighbouring village, paid an advance money to his parents and
promised them a better life for him.

Parents deceived

The
trafficker deceived his parents into believing that Rohan can earn
money in Delhi and can study simultaneously. But in reality the promised
dream turned out to be a nightmare of modern-day slavery, where his
movements were also restricted by his employers.

Thus compelling him to eat, sleep and work in the same room without being paid any wage for the work.

Kailash
Satyarthi, founder of BBA said, “Many major international brands are
flourishing at the cost of freedom and education of Indian children and
thus destroying their childhood,” he said.

“These brands can not hide behind the
excuse of complexity of supply chain management. They are the principal
employers and have to have to be booked under appropriate laws. It
should be investigated that, for whom these children are really
working.”

Therefore it is a kind request please take appropriate action at earliest.